Like the “entangled histories and parallel strands” that author Janet Topp Fargion employs as her central trope to describe Zanzibar’s taarab “music complex” (the latter term adapted from Kaemmer, 1980), her new book, Taarab Music in Zanzibar in the Twentieth Century: A Story of ‘Old is Gold’ and Flying Spirits, weaves together social, political, economic, musical, and gender issues in crossing and re-crossing warps and wefts, producing a richly layered cultural tapestry that tells a tale—a scholarly “yarn”—of this geographically isolated yet globally implicated island culture.

In the spectrum of Zanzibari scholarship, Fargion’s monograph is not so much a primer (if there could be such a thing) as a compilation and augmentation of previous work by Said A.M. Khamis, Hildegard Kiel, Jan Knappert, Annemette Kirkegaard, Abdul Sheriff, and especially Werner Graebner and Laura Fair, as well as research conducted on Arab musical influences by A. J. Racy and others. Her goal here is to show how female participants in a Muslim dominated community, most of whom are audience members who do not perform on instruments themselves, have nevertheless been an epicentral force, the chief cultural arbiters, behind the gradual Africanization/Swahilization of the genre. With this argument she challenges Jill Dubish’s 1986 model regulating women to “natural” (as opposed to cultural) and “domestic” (as opposed to public) roles. Based on almost a year of fieldwork (1989-1990), plus several more recent follow-up trips, the study is richly informed by the many contacts Fargion has made with Zanzabari (including academics, music professionals, and amateur fans) and specialist scholars. The strength of the work lies in its broad scope, the result of the author’s twenty-five year investment in this subject area, and in her ability to nuance discussion and refine her arguments based on feedback and supplemental clarifications solicited from a wide pool of well-informed consultants. A small downside to this is that, as an expert, she does not always provide sufficient background to situate laymen readers. For example, indigenous terms like ngomi or mkwasa are laced throughout the text, most clearly defined at the outset, but there are a few occurrences of them where more information, or perhaps an index or glossary entry, would be helpful. Attentive readers, however, will readily absorb the new vocabulary and appreciate the author’s economical and evenhanded glossing of complex scenarios.

The book organizes taarab sub-genres into three categories: orchestral taarab, heavily influenced by the Egyptian takht tradition, locally referred to as “old is gold”; kidumbak, influenced by South African kwela music, used primarily for dancing; and taarab ya wanawake, or “women’s taarab,” inspired by the late singer/star Siti binti Saad and arising out of lelemama women’s clubs. There is also some discussion of rusha roho and other contemporary expressions of the music. Information is arranged chronologically, modeling how the styles developed, though the narrative often circles back to fill in more detail about simultaneously occurring trends, as when Fargion shows how the orchestral style became more relevant with the advent and growth of the island’s global tourist industry and the concurrent capitalization, appropriation, and “revivalist construction” (202) of this most “traditional” of taarab genres. Fargion focuses on the poetry/lyrics of the music and on its various social settings and cultural contexts, giving detailed descriptions of performances, including repertoire, instrumentation, and forms of participation (even including a fascinating account of women’s fashions). On the other hand, there is little in the way of musicological analysis or audio example to differentiate the sub-genres from each other, or from other influences, such as Arab, Indian, and African sources. Fargion doesn’t need these to make her case, but, again, they would have helped to acclimatize the layman reader/listener.

Some of the most compelling passages of the book arise out of Fargion’s fieldwork. Her biographical sketch of Idi Abdulla Farhan at the end of chapter 1 efficiently and provocatively “sums up [the] range of ambiguities and complexities in defining taarab music in Zanzibar” (15). Her detailed personal travelogue appearing (surprisingly) late in the text, comparing her initial impressions with subsequent visits, gives readers a real sense of being there. Her interviews with local professionals in the education and entertainment/tourist industries supplied her with material for insightful commentary on, for example, the use of metaphoric language to avoid public humiliation, the fine line between malumbo (socially acceptable verbal sparring) and makutano (outright public character assassination) in mpasho (gossip) songs, or on the interrelationship of music piracy, copyright protection policies, and local market size. Fargion allows her consultants to voice their issues, often re-consulting them for further elucidation or amplification, and she is careful to show that there are many “correct” interpretations of a given phenomenon, depending upon one’s point of view. Her overview of cross-cultural contact across the Indian Ocean compiles conflicting scholarly accounts with equanimity, problematizing any facile categorizations or conclusions, and in outlining the formation of Swahili women’s societies and their historical economic dependency, she does an excellent job of assembling and balancing relevant scholarship.

The profusion of long passages of Swahili lyrics in the main text (accompanied by English translations) does little to help the majority of lay readers, who presumably will not speak Swahili and/or be able to evaluate the translations. Bilingual scholars will certainly appreciate having the original text, but perhaps both readerships would have been better served with a small sample of Swahili in the body, the rest of it relegated to the footnotes. Leaving this quibble aside, anyone reading the book is certain to come away with an increased understanding of and appreciation for—and probably even more questions about—Zanzabari taarab and the people who make it.

Works Cited

Dubish, Jill. 1986. “Introduction.” Gender and Power in Rural Greece, edited by J. Dubish. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Kaemmer, John E. 1980. “Between the Event and the Tradition: A New Look at Music in Sociocultural Systems,” Ethnomusicology 24: 61-74.

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[Review length: 972 words • Review posted on November 1, 2016]